


Threads of Sand

by rx_rx



Category: Original Work
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Existentialism, Friendship/Love, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-04-23 17:31:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19155727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rx_rx/pseuds/rx_rx
Summary: The world is going out with a whisper. Mikhael dreams of a better life, but when ghosts from the past continue to haunt his present, he realizes how hard it can be to run away from the past.





	1. Lament at the Threshold

A rare whisper of sunshine slipped through the dense, dead branches. It would have almost been beautiful if it wasn’t for the strange, grinding sounds echoing through the atmosphere which never ceased. Occasionally, Mikhael would hear the distinct roaring from bioweapons.

The bioweapons avoided water, which was why outposts these days were built near the ocean.

There was a slight, tangy smell of cut hay and overripe pumpkin, which stopped Mikhael dead in his tracks. He held his breath.

This was bad.

He lowered his little sister to the ground and checked her ventilation mask. The poison was concentrated here in the forest with a gas one used to make plastics and pesticides, Mikhael knew. Not only that, but this forest was known for its strange electromagnetic field that rendered all digital devices and machines useless. It messed with an animal's cognitive abilities and short-circuited other kinds of synthetic lifeforms.  

These grounds were avoided by those who knew of its effects and forbidden by others who warned others not to trespass for their own sake. People were known to enter the forest, never to reemerge. 

Mikhael removed a neckless strung around his neck and tossed it into the soil off the beaten path. They were identification tags that he used to get around the outpost he once lived. He had no intention of ever returning now.

“Are you okay?” Mikhael mouthed silently, taking shallow breaths as he adjusted his sister’s mask, making sure she could read his lips. He covered his mouth with the back of his sleep and inhaled deeply. A train was waiting for them, but it wouldn't wait forever. They had to move fast.

Rain nodded.

“Hold on tight,” he motioned, gripping his fingers. He held his hand up near his forehead to check sure Rain understood. Six months ago, a tumor had eaten through her spine, paralyzing her from the waist down. His sister was fitted with medical prosthetic legs that allowed her some mobility, but here in this strange electromagnetic field, her legs were dead weight. Mikhael had no choice but to carry her.

“Good,” Mikhael exhaled, lifting her across his back. They were dressed head to toe in green, hooded coveralls. He carried her, knowing what areas in the forest to avoid completely and which were permittable. He had ventured into his forest enough times on his own with Cal's guidance to know.

It was a shame Cal could not be with them now, but Mikhael knew why they had to travel separately.

Cal would be waiting for them at the platform.

Far to the left of where they walked was a lake. Mikhael avoided getting too close. Near the shore resided a child who never left the perimeter. Mikhael had seen the child himself a couple of times before now, but never dared get too close. He only ever caught a glimpse of the child staring into its own reflection in the lake.

Clearly, the child was not human. The lake was too poisonous to even allow a person to stand on the shores for more than a few minutes.

The child must have been a surrogate — a manufactured child. A wealthy family likely purchased it centuries ago, but had died leaving the child to be all along in the world, possibly for thousands of years since the practice of owning surrogates had been outlawed and obsolete for centuries.

Most surrogates had been gathered and scraped for metal and other parts, but a few were still left to linger the world. They were programmed to love conditionally and with a need to seek affection in return. Without the ability to act on either of the actions it was programmed to do, abandoned surrogates often turned unstable, feral.

If it was a surrogate, the strange electromagnetic field around the forest should have rendered it immobile — _should_ being the key word. That would explain why the inhuman child remained where it always had, immobile and never moving a fraction. Its machinery had fried, short-circuited. 

The thing was more scrap metal packaged inside a shell resembling a human child than it was the surrogate it was designed to have been.

Rain tapped his shoulder. She pointed the lake as they walked past it. A sliver of sunlight pierced through the branches above them and hit the ground next to Mikhael’s foot. He stepped around the scattered light, for no logical reason. Something did not feel right about treading on the sun.

Again, Rain tapped his shoulder, pointing to a tree branch. She tapped her thumb and pointer finger impatiently in front of his eyes and pointed again to the tree branch, almost desperately trying to pull his attention to it.

Perched on the branch was a large black bird. Mikhael had seen birds before, but never one this close that was alive. They usually flew high above the ground, never landing too close to solid earth. Birds were usually too smart to get this close to the toxic wastelands that now polluted the world. 

The bird hopped and fluttered to the next branch over, following them. Mikhael refused to stop walking. The bird stared back, eyes like milky liquid and vacant as if the bird was staring right through them. Mikhael adjusted his sister, repositioning her prosthetic legs from digging into his ribs.

The bird landed on the ground next to them. Its eyes were on him, wide and unblinking. It let out a loud, uncanny _squaaaaaaaak_.

“Stupid bird,” Mikhael muttered to himself, fully-aware Rain could not hear anything. “We’re almost to the platform. Keep it together,” he mumbled to himself, inhaling unpleasantly on the chalky, tangy stench of hay. There was a buzzing inside his skull — like radio static. The toxins poisoning this place was taking its toll. He took more shallow breaths and covered his mouth with his sleeve and reminded himself to quit wasting breath.

Mikhael hefted Rain higher onto his shoulders. Her prosthetic legs dangled around his ribs legs like metal clamps.

Five years ago, Rain was fitted with these prosthetics. The materials were cheap and clunky, but they gave her mobility and at the time, that was all that mattered. Being crippled and bound to a wheelchair was not the life he wanted for his sister. They were working-class inhabitants who worked in the recycling factories at the last outpost. At least with her prosthetics, she could do the manual labor required of her.

A citizen who could not work was deported to containment clinics underground. Mikhael refused to allow that to happen to her. That was why they had to leave. Rain’s health was deteriorating rapidly. She could no longer withstand the working conditions of the recycling factories.

A barbed-wire fence appeared in the distance surrounded with rings of razor wire. If Mikhael walked along the fence, he knew there would be a gate. 

Mikhael lowered Rain to the ground and checked that her ventilation mask was secure for good measure. Past the barbed wire fence was a clearing. That was where the platform was they had to reach. Mikhael motioned her to “hold on tight” again before hauling her across his back. He treaded through the off-beaten underbrush and soil.

The bird did not follow them here.

Stepping on the dirt beneath his feet disturbed the toxins in the soil, making the air harder to breathe here.

It took Mikhael too long to react to Rain tapping on his shoulder not. How long had she been trying to get his attention? Her arms were wrapped around the breadth of his shoulders. She tapped his chest a few times to get Mikhael to pay attention to her hand movements and once he did, she frantically snapped his fingers back over and over again.

 _Your heart is beating fast_ , she was telling him.

“I’m okay,” Mikhael said aloud. And then signaled as an afterthought what he had voiced aloud. _I’m okay,_ he told her, touching his thumb to his chest.

The gate wasn’t too far from the path they had been. The fence was an old, forgotten security measure put into place after the train station that used to run through here was shut down.

Cal was waiting for him on the platform as promised.

As a synthetic lifeform, the electromagnetic field clouding the forest would have made it impossible for Cal to cross. The path he took instead was heavily polluted with lead, mercury, and chlorine, as well as human remains.

Mikhael and Rain would not have survived the same route.

This was where they agreed to meet.

Back at the outpost, Mikhael had first mistaken Cal for another human when they first met in the recycling factories. In wasn’t until an acid spill in the factories that Mikhael realized Cal wasn’t like him. Half of his body had been melted after the accident. Most of the circuity in his left arm had been destroyed by the sulfuric acid, even though he assured Mikhael that is was only cosmetic damage. It could still function.

"You're injured," Cal said.

Mikhael shook his head. “I'm not." 

Cal watched him carefully — no, he was scanning him. "But you are."

Mikhael shoved him aside. Cal allowed it and stepped aside, even though he was far more powerful and stronger than Mikhael ever could be and could have easily held his stance. “I'm here now, aren't I?"

Cal told him. “You can’t go—“

“I can’t stay. I mean, _I can,_ but I can already guess how that might end for me. The ocean is rising around the outpost. People are being pushed out into the wastelands."

A beat passed between them.

“Your sister seems fine," Cal noted.

"I would hope so," Mikhael answered absently, but he could tell Cal was calculating, over-processing a scenario it did not foresee.

"Let me carry her," Cal offered. 

His sister knew Cal. Rain trusted him. When Cal scooped her into his arms, she threw her arms warmly around his neck. 

“Make sure she’s safe,” Mikhael told Cal. The only reason he had the strength to make this journey was to ensure his sister would have safe passage out of here. Even if he did manage to get on board the train to the next outpost, he may not survive the journey.

It was a train built to run underwater. The massive pipe the train traveled down would eventually run underwater. 

“How far do you think that train will take us?” Mikhael asked.

“There’s another outpost on the other side of the ocean. It’s high enough above sea level that everyone should be safe for a long time. I hear rumors that the trees there have mutated there to produce higher quantities of oxygen." 

“Not bad,” Mikhael nodded, imagining the new life his sister could have. Mikhael lifted the necklace around his sister’s neck. Strung to the end of it was a tag. He wanted to make sure it would be visible to those around them. Encoded in it was every detail about her. It marked her as an inhabitant at the outpost they once lived. It entitled her to rations and shelter and protection — all the things Mikhael had to pretend he was entitled to when he was at the outpost.

It was a good thing he tossed the fakes ones he had before arriving here. 

“Mikhael.”

Mikhael raised his head when Cal called. “Yeah?”

“They're waiting for us.”

He followed Cal to the platform.

“I never knew you had fake identification,” Cal said before they would be within earshot of others waiting to board the train. “Weren’t you processed when you arrived at the outpost?”

"Best not to talk about it now."

“Why did you?”

“Why did I never tell you—don't be an idiot," Mikhael coughed. For a guy with an engineered brain, Cal could really be quite stupid. "You know why I could never tell _anyone_. I needed something to get me around the outpost. The only reason you know anything about it now is that I had to tell you before we came here in case...just in case..."

Cal was silent as they neared the train. He cradled Rain’s head in one hand and gently held her against his shoulder, waiting for Mikhael to finish.

'...in case I can't make it on board."

The conductor approached Cal and Mikhael as they neared the train. “Is there a problem?”

Without missing a beat, Cal replied. “It appears my companion lost his identification tags.” Cal adjusted Rain in his arms. She giggled through her ventilation mask and wrapped her arms affectionately around Cal’s neck. “He’ll have to be reprocessed at the outpost once we get there. That won’t be a problem, will it?”

“We'll find out,” the conductor replied, not bothering to put a stop to Mikhael from boarding. “ _You_  may not be allowed in the new outpost. Surrogates are outlawed.”

“Well, fuck you too,” Mikhael said.

The conductor appeared taken aback by this outburst.

“Don’t mind him,” Cal insisted. “As you can see, I think he’s breathed in a little too much of this toxic air around us and isn’t thinking clearly."

"Do you know how far we are from the nearest outpost? Have you any idea how dangerous this forest is?" The conductor scolded Mikahel like a child, voice mechanically distorted through a mask of his own. Goggles were suctioned to his eyes. He squinted through amber-tinted lenses. "Where's your protective gear?"

"Defective," Cal answered icily.

“I see,” the conductor replied. “And the girl?” He nodded to the girl in his arms and checked the identification tags around her neck with a cursory scan of his palm. Embedded in his hand was a metallic chip of some sort that allowed him to comprehend the data stored on it.

“She's our daughter,” Cal continued.

Mikhael blinked. This was an unexpected turn of events.

“I'll collect your passes.”

The conductor removed the identification tags that dangled from Rain’s neck. This was their collateral. In exchange for passage out of here, they were no longer inhabitants of the outpost they once lived. That protection had now been revoked in hopes of a better one.

Mikhael took a seat at the back of the train. His weight dropped and he coughed weakly, leaning on his side. Cal followed and took the seat next to him, holding Rain in his arms.

Cal whispered so only Mikhael could hear. “All these passengers are wondering who you are.”

“Yeah right. Nobody cares,” Mikhael replied. He eyed the passengers and was somewhat unnerved to realize that they all suddenly averted their gaze when he looked.

“Nobody owns surrogates anymore unless they’ve been passed down by generations, and they were only ever owned by prominent families," Cal explained.

"Right." Mikhael considered what Cal was telling him. “One of these days, you should tell me what happened to yours."

“I don’t like to talk about it.”

It was absurdly idiocentric for Cal to phrase it like that. Too human, almost.

“Do you really not like to talk about it or were you sworn to secrecy to never talk about it?”

“I don’t like to talk about it," Cal repeated.

"Okay, whatever."

“Isn’t it interesting how must we don’t trust a thing that the other says, and yet here we are traveling about to start a new life together. You, me and our daughter.”

It was a good thing Rain was deaf.

“Do me a favor, Cal and shut up. You’re going to make me throw up.”

Moments after the train started to hit its high-speed trajectory underwater, Mikhael did.


	2. Engulfed

At some point during the train voyage, Rain had removed her mask and fitted it over Mikhael’s mouth. He stirred once he felt the metal, warmed by the heat of Rain’s skin, pressed across his face. He coughed into the mask, disoriented and unsure where he was.

Cal was sitting next to him, staring emptily into the nothingness outside their window. The glass was thick and impermeable. They were under the ocean water, though nowhere near the ocean floor. The railway was built like an underwater pipeline, keeping them rushing at high-velocity speeds across a railway which was only a few hundred meters below the water's surface.

Mikhael slipped his bare fingers beneath the mask and tried to remove it, but Cal prevented him from doing that. “Keep it. The mask will clear the toxins from your lungs,” he insisted. “Rain wants to sleep without it. She’ll be fine. This was her idea. Besides, the air is safe here."

Rain was curled into Cal’s jacket. Without the mask, her face rested comfortably against his chest. Even though he was a surrogate filled with cybernetic parts, the biogel that flowed beneath his synthetic skin made him warm, soft and near human-like.

Mikhael shifted between periods of consciousness and sleep. He observed the ocean pass by him. The ocean was a graveyard of endless blue. Occasionally, a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye would drag him out of sleep. It would be the shifting of green and white lights as sunlight from the ocean surface penetrated the ocean depths — nothing more. Nothing else was alive out here. It was possible life bloomed far below the ocean at depths Mikhael could not fathom, but here the ocean was depleted of oxygen and filled with a chemical concentration that made it impossible to support life. The oceans had turned into acid.

When Mikhael slept, he was haunted by dreams from when he worked in the recycling factories. It was where he first met Cal. There was a girl who used to work in the assembly line with them. One morning, she was sick and dizzy with a cold while working too close around a mold pressing machine when her clothes got stuck in the gears, sucked her in and crushed her to death.

Blood and broken glass went everywhere. Mikhael remembered grabbing her after the pressing machine jammed long enough for him to crawl through. He pulled her by the waistband of her coveralls. Only half of her was intact. His hand slipped over the blood drenching her clothes. He lost his grip. Her insides, hot and bloody dripping down his arm.

Someone grabbed his arm.

Mikhael flinched.

“It’s alright, it’s only me.”

“Right,” Mikhael croaked, blindly pushing Cal away. His voice was artificial sounding through the mask. He felt a pressure in his lungs, suffocating him like the stars tugged at the oceans. He couldn’t breathe. He tugged the mask off his face. It dangled by a strap around his neck.

“Bad dream?”

“I…I don’t…,” Mikhael’s coughed, unsure why his heart was racing. He rubbed his face. “I don’t feel well.”

“You need more oxygen.”

“I hate it when you do that.”

“Anyone with functioning visual can see you don't look well. You're showing all the symptoms of hypoxemia. You don't need a sensory scan to be told that.”

Cal then handed Mikhael a small canister. It was oxygen, diluted and pure.

Mikhael took a slow deep pull from it, inhaling deeply. He soon felt light-headed. “It’s a shame this will be confiscated when we arrive.”

“Better to use it now, then.”

“How did you get it?" Mikhael questioned. "You know how much this would go for in the underground markets at the outpost.”

“Someone owed me a favor.”

“Must’ve owed you their life.”

Cal watched him, impassive and cold. He must have thought it appropriate to mention then, “I used to be like you. I knew what it meant to suffer…sometimes I forget what it’s like.”

The oxygen may have temporarily curved his nausea, but Mikhael still felt ill. He handed the canister back to Cal and closed his eyes, moving the mask. He hated when Cal started in on one of his existential drabbles. “You have no idea how good you have it.”

“Time makes you forget.”

“Thought that wasn’t possible for you.” Mikhael quipped, “that synthetic brain of yours must be corroding.”

“It’s possible. My memories aren’t what they used to be after the acid pill in the recycling factories.”

Cal blinked, loathing and abhorrently alert. “You said there wasn’t any permanent damage—“

Rain stirred. She moved her prosthetic legs to stand upright, regaining mobility. Cal helped her stand. There was little room for any of them to move. A steel bench lined the perimeters of the train so passengers could have a scenic view of the ocean, not that anyone was necessarily enjoying it.

This train once traveled regularly from one place to another, transporting passengers. The train no longer ran under ordinary authorization. It was reserved for freight deliveries and only under emergency circumstances, which made perfect sense considering Mikhael felt like a piece of cargo.

This particular excursion was a one-way trip. The train would never return to where it started or ever run again. The fuel that powered it was fleeting, disappearing and would soon be gone. The engine would be impossible to refuel. There were no resources left to keep it running. This would be its final run.

It explained the upkeep of the interior. The coppery tang of blood lingered in the metalwork. There was a distinct stench of stomach bile, and the complexion of the interior vessel was a sickly ochre hue, reminding Mikhael of a swamp choked with rotting vegetation.

An old lady sat crosslegged and huddled on the floor. A ventilation mask concealed her face. Most of the passengers on the train had one clamped across their face. A few who must have been sensitive to the atmospheric gasses — or out of an abundance of caution — wore airtight goggles.

With only one working mask between them, Mikhael, Cal, and Rain drew attention, and not the kind of attention Mikhael wanted. Before they boarded, he was already drawing plenty.


	3. Angels and Giants

“Foun’ ya sum safe passage outta the ou’post, after all, yah?” A scrawny man grabbed Mikael by the shoulder and nearly tripped across his lap. 

Cal observed the stranger with the type of defensive instinct that Mikael would prefer he would not. 

The stranger’s voice was distorted and difficult to discern through a mask of his own. Amber-tinted goggles concealed the rest of his face. He propped the goggles to his forehead and drew his mask down his jaw. It dangled by a strap loosely around his neck.

“Phade!” He introduced himself, pointing two fingers at his throat. There was a vivid, turquoise ring around his pupils. It was the synthetic aether running through his veins, poisoning his blood.

That’s when the memory hit Mikhael like a carbon pipe to the skull. “Ah,” he murmured, throwing his head back, recalling vividly and his reaction those memories were visceral. “At Waypoint? Yeah, I remember you.” Waypoint was the collective gates surrounding the outpost. Nothing ever got in without being thoroughly checked, probed and processed. Mikael tried to swallow but failed. “Tried to have me killed.”

Phade appeared taken back, offended that Mikhael accused him. “Nah, man! I n’ver done any sor’ of thing! Tryin’ the protect eve’yun’, and that’s the sor’ of thanks I ge’yah?” Phade backhanded the back of Cal’s knee. “You see how he trea’s me? We go way back, ‘im an’ I. I saved yer life sending you away. Rest o’em at Waypoint wuld’ad killed yah right then and there!” Phade scoffed. “Gratitude fer yah!”

Years ago, when Mikhael, Rain and their mother first arrived into the outpost seeking refuge, Phade had been one of the clinicians on staff who declined him – and him alone – entry into the outpost. Mikhael was defective, medically unfit, a liability to society and an outright danger to the rest of the population at the outpost.

He was deported to containment clinics underground. Rain, who had only gone completely deaf by then, had been sent to work at the recycling factories.

Their mother was taken away. He never saw her again after that day. Mikhael had his own suspicions what may have happened to her. She was one of the very few women left in the world who could bear children – a genetic miracle. It was estimated 99% of the global population was infertile. 

“I, uh couldn’t ‘elp but notice tha’um oxygen ‘ere and I could use sum o’at.” Phade cozied up to Mikhael even more, slithering a lanky arm over his shoulders and drawing him close, ignoring Cal who sat transfixed, seeming fascinated by the interaction and who this man was to Mikael. “Help an ol’ friend out, yah?”

“Old friend?” Mikhael repeated, his voice a careful blank.

“Cooooom’on friend,” Phade slurred, lips curved in a desperate, despicable smile that made Mikhael want to punch off his face. “One hit, yah?”

“Friend,” Cal called softly to him, emphasizing the word in the most ironic sense. “Tell me what ails you, I can usually detect these things, and strangely, I cannot detect anything wrong with you. I am curious to know.”

“Wot kinda stupid question Is that? Can’yah feel it, or you got some artificial lungs in your chest there?” Phade rapped his knuckles against Cal’s chest cavity, striking flesh-hued synthetic skin bundled over a coat and padded underneath with biogel. As far as Phade could discern, Cal was perfectly human. “T'is air. Everywhere. Suffoca’ing us!”

“But not here,” Cal reminded him. The air inside the cabin had an improper reserve of air. It would barely be enough to grant them a comfortable, safe passage to their destination. “Not yet.”

“Fuck d’you mean?”

“Other than the excess levels of synthetic aether in your blood, there’s nothing wrong with you. I mean…besides the fact you seem to be really elevating my companion’s blood pressure here.”

“Well fuck yah too!” Phade shoved him, but Cal did not budge. He held himself rigid like an iron wall. Phade lowered his fist and eyed it questionably as if unsure how much effort he had really put into that shove. Phade puzzled over his own strength, vaguely in awe. It must have not occurred to him that Cal wasn’t entirely human. “Wot the...?”

The thing about Cal was how remarkably strong he was. Roughly 95% of his body was crafted from obsolete materials that were impossible to bend or break using what limited technology the world now had. Not even acid could corrode it, although Mikhael had seen enough evidence that made him doubt that. 

“Pfft,” Phade blew air between his teeth, turning to ignore Cal. He tapped his gloved fingers across Mikhael’s shoulder, arm still sleazily stretched around him. It was the synthetic aether flowing through his veins – a terribly potent and powerful drug. It was meant to take the debilitating headaches and catatonic seizures associated with Wasteland Disease. To help cope with the pain, synthetic aether was administered. The drugs numbered the pain along with everything else that made you feel alive.

Phade clearly abused the drug and did it in high doses. His pupils were blown out and outlined with a turquoise ring. He was too dependent on the drug. He wouldn’t survive without it. The oxygen was to help quench the dependency. He didn't need it because breathing was difficult, and he didn't need it to prevent brain damage. The damage there had been done.

Wasteland Disease was uncurable and the cause was subjective. There were those who believed people were being snuffed out like a whisper in the wind the this was one of the many ways the universe meant to end them all. Mikael chalked it all up to the combination of toxins that had accumulated in the world over time. People weren’t meant to breathe this shit constantly – whether it be concentrated or diluted pockets of toxic air or air artificially squeezed through a filtrating mask.

Rain dragged one of her prosthetic legs across the floor of the overcrowded train, preventing it from knocking into other passengers crushing in around them. The slightest jostle of the train caused a rumble that made her leg knock into the old lady who remained sitting on the floor, legs crossed.

 _Sorry_ , she apologized, rotating her hand on his chest. 

The woman ignored her.

“Yah,” Phade snapped his fingers in front of Mikhael. “S’bout my hit?”

Mikhael rubbed a hand over his face, stalling for time while he imagined dragging Phade through a mold pressing machine. Meanwhile, Cal picked Rain up and sat her gently in his lap, positioning her so she wasn’t facing her brother.

“Let him have it, Cal,” Mikhael ordered. If he was correct about how ravaged Phade’s body had become by Wasteland Disease, the sudden influx of oxygen to his brain would induce a catatonic seizure. “It’s going to get confiscated at the next outpost either way.”

Cal handed the canister over to Phade as Mikhael requested, with enough hesitation that Mikhael expected Cal to outright ignore him. Phade took a deep drag – inhaled multiple times until something knocked him back into his seat and he nearly dropped the canister. Cal took it from him before it hit the ground. He was uncannily still, eyes blank.

“He's having a seizure,” Cal stated.

Mikhael twisted his hands in his lap, relieved. “Praise the angels.”

“Angels?” Cal lingered on that word, ignoring the catatonic man now slumped between them. “Thought you didn’t believe in those.”

“It’s only an expression, Cal.”

“They say the world used to be roamed by angels and giants.”

“Don’t tell me you believe that lore,” Mikhael said, and immediately regretted it.

There was a pained expression in Cal’s eyes. His brows furrowed. In a defeated tone, he admitted, “I do believe. They exist.”

“You’re so clever, Cal. You’re so clever, and yet you can be so remarkably stupid. How is that?”

Cal leveled a glare at him that would have flattened whole, decaying forests, which was impressive as it came from the corner of his eye. Rain was content sitting on his lap, eyes wandering out the observation window, watching the underwater graveyard whish past them.

“Imagine if we were not on this train,” Cal began softly, “but on a rocketship traveling high into the clouds. Some might watch the world getting further away. Others might watch the stars getting closer. Which would you watch?”

Mikhael sighed in bone-deep weariness. “Those are my only options?”

“This isn’t a hypothetical situation with many options.”

“Well," Mikhael paused, giving it some minimal consideration. "It wouldn’t be the stars since those obviously don’t exist either.”

“They do.”

“They don’t.”

“My visual acuity allows me to see past the ash and dust in the clouds and into the stars. They are there, I promise you.”

“Those aren’t stars,” Mikhael responded dryly. “Those are holes poked in the lid of the jar so that we can breathe.”

Cal studied him carefully. He may have been even scanning Mikhael to make sure he was mentally all there at that moment. Mikhael must have checked out okay, because the next question asked was, “do you really believe that?”

“I do.” Mikhael rubbed his mouth, maintaining conviction so he would at least sound convincing. “And whoever did it did one hell of a job.”


End file.
